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Toggle navigation p. 39 | Nina Wakeford Nina Wakeford works through performance, installation and moving image to address the unfinished business of past social movements, and the challenges of revisiting their energies. Sometimes she draws from archives. At other times, inspiration comes from friends, lovers and their obsessions. In this project, her starting point was the death of a friend, Anna Livia Brawn, and a forgotten book. Anna translated a 1930 novel written by an openly lesbian Parisian writer, Lucie Delarus-Mardrus, into English. In the 1930 novel, the main character lives as both male and female. The author incorporates caricatures of bourgeois ‘celebrity’ lesbians, some of whom were known to have intimate moments while riding in the Bois de Boulogne. Yet the author died almost penniless, and she estranged her family and friends when she refused to end her relationship with a musical hall singer with a working-class ‘Parigot’ accent and ‘vulgar way with words’. Finally tracking down a first edition of the novel in Librairie Vignes in Paris, Nina felt she rejoined Anna again. As a way to recognise the challenges of revisiting furtive encounters between women as fetishized moments of lesbian history, as well as bibliophilia, Nina develops a combination of recently collected materials: spoken, sung, mediated and transformed. Nina Wakeford (United Kingdom) is in residence through the 2–12 programme Nina Wakeford, in conversation with Federica Chiocchetti, Open Studios | Les Rencontres de Montmartre, June 2026 © Maurine Tric / Adagp Paris, 2026 Nina Wakeford’s work seeks to give tangible form to demands through concrete interventions and often incorporates shouts, songs or even made-up slogans. She is the co-initiator of the Swiss Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, which draws on archival research into the lives of LGBT people in Switzerland as part of her exhibition Concrete Comeback ⚣⚢ Arms Are For Linking. She is a professor of art at Goldsmiths, University of London. She also co-founded the Artist Citizens Jury with Elizabeth Price, a project informed by her background in sociology. Installation Marais Site → Vitrine From October 20 to November 21, 2026 Open from 10am to 7pm Free entry Curated by: Federica Chiocchetti, Arts and Culture Programme Manager and Alix Pornon, Arts and Culture Programme Officer, Cité internationale des arts Search Suggestions : Ateliers ouverts Les Voix se lèvent Auditorium Équipe